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Vigor

Vigor is a measure of physical power, raw strength and endurance. It is the ability to keep performing physical activity despite fatigue or injury, as well as for lifting, moving and breaking things. It determines the character’s Physical Stress Track, and is the governing skill for Wildshifting and Bloodshifting.

This is a measure of pure physical power, be it raw strength or simply the knowledge of how to use the strength one has. For lifting, moving and breaking things, Vigor is the skill of choice. Vigor may be used indirectly as well, to modify, complement, or limit some skill uses. Vigor is also the ability to keep performing physical activity despite fatigue or injury. It’s a measure of the body’s resistance to shock and effort. Characters with a high Vigor include athletes, laborers, and explorers.

Fighting People [Vigor]

In combat, Vigor can be used to help with particular applications of Melee—if force is a very significant element at play, Vigor will modify the primary skill. Furthermore, someone successfully engaging an opponent in a one-on-one exchange can potentially switch from Melee to Vigor, if executing a hold or other wrestling move where it’s less about hitting someone as it is about overwhelming them with physical force. Such a switch would result from a maneuver of some sort.

Breaking Things [Vigor]

Vigor is the skill of choice for applying brute force to break things in halves or smaller pieces, and includes breaking boards, knocking down doors and the like. Using Vigor, items can be damaged over time or broken with a single dramatic blow. (For guidelines on breaking things, see Vigor Tables.)

Lifting Things [Vigor]

Vigor also controls how much the character can lift or move. The weight of the thing being moved sets the difficulty for the roll. (For a discussion of weight and the lifting of heavy things, see Vigor Tables.)

Resisting Fatigue [Vigor]

Vigor can particularly come into play in long-term actions, as a secondary, restricting skill, where the character’s ability to keep performing at peak is limited by how able they are to overcome fatigue and pain; this is why top athletes have their Vigor skill on par with (or better than!) their Athletics skill. Someone without a solid Vigor skill may be a good sprinter, but will find themselves winded and falling behind in a marathon.

Resisting Poisons and Disease [Vigor]

Vigor measures how well a character shrugs off poisons and disease (for a treatment of poisons, see Running the Game).

Physical Stress [Vigor]

Vigor also determines a character’s health capacity (the length of a character’s Physical stress track), since Physical stress represents physical wounds and fatigue.

By default, players have 3 boxes for their Physical stress track. Better-than-Mediocre (+0) Vigor increases the number of boxes as shown here.